


Like A Rolling Stone Gryphon

by rthstewart



Series: The Stone Gryphon [16]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: 3 Sentence Ficathon, 3 Sentence Fiction, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - rthverse, Multi, Original Character(s), Spare Oom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:09:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 4,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29846853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rthstewart/pseuds/rthstewart
Summary: Numerous fills in The Stone Gryphon AU for the Three Sentence FicathonSpoiler:  Often not three sentences
Relationships: Edmund Pevensie/Original Female Character(s), Edmund Pevensie/Original Male Character(s), Jill Pole/Eustace Scrubb, Lucy Pevensie/Original Male Character(s), Peter Pevensie/Original Female Character(s), Susan Pevensie/Original Male Character(s)
Series: The Stone Gryphon [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/15017
Comments: 72
Kudos: 51





	1. Chaos and Inspired Genius

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ViaLethe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViaLethe/gifts), [Syrena_of_the_lake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syrena_of_the_lake/gifts), [loveandrockmusic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveandrockmusic/gifts), [athoughtfox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/athoughtfox/gifts), [ElementalRaven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElementalRaven/gifts), [Francienyc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Francienyc/gifts), [WingedFlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingedFlight/gifts).



> Please note content warning for chapter 1 for badly attempted and very unsuccessful dubcon and period typical homophobic behavior.

Loveandrockmusic, Rthverse, any, the vibes from [this commercial](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk2NaGky8DE)

Larm was looking for Edmund, chaos and the inspired genius that arises from it, or inspired chaos and the genius that arises from it. In any event, Edmund in Washington DC was the result.

_**Content and trigger warning in this chapter for attempted dubcon, period homophobic attitudes)** _

* * *

Walker-Smythe had, during one of their earliest lessons, cautioned that good intelligence work was often dull, which Edmund had superb tolerance for, and that success often depended upon building solid relationships, which was where he’d often come up short. As he’d explained to Jalur so long ago, it wasn’t that he minded human interaction – he just always wanted it on his own terms. Susan, Tebbitt, Guy Hill, and the still absent and much-missed Lowrey had all excelled at this more intimate part of the job and so he just had to figure out how to do what they did, but play to his strengths as it were.  
  
He started taking a sandwich at lunch to the tony men’s bars and private clubs – places like the Mayflower and the Cosmo, the ones he knew Tebbitt and Lowrey had frequented, and where Guy had come to know the backroom staff – the busboys, cigarette girls, coat-checkers, cooks, doormen, waiters, and what the Americans referred to as “bouncers.” He never went when there many people about and he’d play up the young and befuddled Englishman, confused about American coins and sport, and missing his girl (that part wasn’t acting). He’d just have a glass of water or milk, eat his sandwich, and leave a really large tip and sometimes a Hershey bar he’d gotten through Shirley in procurement, who got real chocolate from the office girls at the Pentagon.  
  
Returning to the same places at night, they would be smoky, crowded, loud, and filled with men from the Embassies, Capitol Hill, the U.S. State Department, the American alphabet agencies, and the different War Departments at the Pentagon. Edmund still tipped well, his coat was always the first time come, the bartenders would water his drink when he asked, and he’d help the bouncers rough up the drunks who got too familiar with the girls.  
  
He'd started the night at an Embassy party, joined the chaps for rounds at the Cosmo, then dancing at the Bali, and now, the last hardy few were staking out tables at the Mayflower. Edmund found he was sitting, again, and alone, and oddly close, next to Davies. Davies did something vague with the Foreign Office that had him traveling frequently between London and Washington and what Edmund assumed was intelligence.  
  
 _Knows all the right people_ Walker-Smythe had said.  
  
Something pricked at him and Edmund was very glad he’d had nothing but soda water the last three hours. This wasn't just a drunken colleague from the Embassy getting a little sloppy about maintaining respectful distance.   
  
_“Men flirt differently with other men than they do with women,” Abnur had told him so long ago, and then demonstrated how he could crowd, grope, and squeeze to get a man's attention._

  
_But how do men flirt when it’s illegal and sleeping together would get you tossed from whatever plum position you have?  
  
Where, exactly, was this going? __Only one way to find out._  
  
Edmund put his elbows up on the back of the booth they were sharing and pushed back into Davies’s space.  
  
“So, Linch, where did you say Walker-Smythe swept you up from?”  
  
“I didn’t, Davies. But London, as it happens. You?”  
  
“From Cambridge, recruited right into the civil service, over ten years now.”  
  
 _A pub, a summer day, rat and crow exposed, and Major al-Masri warning to study at any place other than that esteemed university._  
  
Davies raised a hand -- it was third time he’d tried to get Nancy’s attention, which wasn't like her at all.  
  
“Damned floozy,” Davies muttered. “You there! Do your job or I shall speak to someone.”  
  
Nancy came over and Edmund’s wariness rose further.  
  
 _Something’s wrong._  
  
“You’re a rum man, right, Linch?” Davies said, preempting anything Edmund could say. “Two, neat.”  
  
“Of course, sir.”  
  
Davies leg moved closer to his own under the table.  
  
“What does Walker-Smythe have you doing?”  
  
Edmund watched Nancy go back to the bar and share some worried words with James, the bartender.  
  
“I honestly have no idea,” Edmund barked with a rough, over-loud laugh. “Typing and filing his correspondence, pouring his drinks, attending his meetings. Bag carrier. Notetaker. I’ve half a mind to request a transfer.”  
  
“Walker-Smythe has done first-class work,” Davies said. “Word is, he’s got a line on some of the codebreakers in the U.S. Army. A young, ambitious firebrand like yourself could learn a lot from him.”  
  
 _And?_  
  
“True,” Edmund replied carefully. “But it’s dull work.”  
  
“If you are interested in a transfer, I could put in a word for you back in London.”  
  
 _In exchange for what?_  
  
“That’s awfully sporting of you, Davies, I…”  
  
Dorothy appeared suddenly, with her tray of cigarettes. “Mr. Linch, would you like your usual?”  
  
 _She knows I don’t smoke._  
  
“Thank you, Dorothy, yes please.”  
  
She handed him a book of matches and two Luckies.  
  
Edmund fingered the matchbook cover, glancing at what Dorothy or someone at the bar had quickly scrawled on the inside cover, _Mickey Finn_.  
  
He made sure Dorothy saw that he’d read the message and then slipped the matchbook into his pocket.  
  
“Cigarette, Davies?”  
  
Davies was patting down his own pockets. “I prefer a pipe and damn, I seem to have left it in my rooms.”  
  
 _Oh yes, I’m sure you did._  
  
"Perhaps after our drinks, we can go back for a smoke?"  
  
Nancy returned with their drinks and set them on the table. They looked identical, except his glass was chipped, also not typical for the Mayflower. 

_So I know which glass is mine._  
  
Edmund reached for it before Davies could.  
  
He wanted to see how this would play out. Was he the target for the recruitment Major al-Masri had warned him of. By whom? For what? Or, maybe Davies was interested in just how close Walker-Smythe was to the U.S. Army Signal Corps and where the one-time pad code sheet had led that they'd taken from the spy who killed Guy Hill last year?  
  
Or, was this just some pathetic man hiding his homosexuality and using knockout drugs on young men in Washington bars? In which case, the stupid venality of it was galling – he was lonely and he might have even slept with him, if he’d asked. But Davies was a villain.  
  
 _I’m not ready for this tonight._  
  
“Well, cheers, Davies!” Edmund lurched to the side and upended his drink right into the man’s lap.  
  
Davies bellowed like an injured bull and bolted up from the booth.  
  
“Great Scott, Davies, I’m so sorry! I’ve obviously had too much tonight! Nancy, some soda and towels please!”  
  
In the mess, of trying to apologize and dry the man off, Edmund managed a squeeze of Davies's own thigh that Abnur would have been proud of – and deeply appreciate – then jostled him so hard, the man’s own drink and the club soda went down his front.  
  
He poured the slurping and sloshing Davies into a taxi. “Lunch, on me, or dinner, next week,” he promised, slurring his words and letting his hand linger too long on Davies’s arm.  
  
“Yes, that would be splendid, Linch. I say, do you want to …”  
  
Edmund slammed the taxi door. “Ta! Cheerio!”  
  
He went back into the bar – James would have put the rum and all the soda on his tab, but he owed Nancy and Dorothy a thanks – and a big tip.  
  
Maybe, next time, he could just recruit the Mayflower staff outright. Davies could get his own Mickey Finn, and then there would be some sort of follow up involving ladies’ lingerie, lipstick, and a photograph or two in the alley behind the hotel…


	2. Running Around In Circles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vialethe, Narnia, Susan &/ any or all of her siblings, _Sometimes, when I can’t sleep/it’s just a matter of time before I’m hearing things/swore I could feel you through the walls/but that’s impossible_

1\. Lucy, too old for childish games

Jack wants to go walking together, go dancing, cheer her on as she throws darts at the pub and buy her a cider when she wins another match and, maybe, even hold her hand over a tea table and kiss her cheek, but only if she does it first. 

He’s trying, really trying, and Lucy nods as he talks about Boston and Harvard and steps a little further away as they match strides across the park.

A thousand years ago, Lucy learned lovemaking from Maenads, the first male she’d had sex with was a god, and her husband had been ten years her senior -- Jack is just so damned _young_.

2\. Edmund, Paintings on the wall

Edmund stares at the rough paintings in the How and they are so fragile, he traces only the outlines with his fingers. He lingers over the image of a woman in what might have been Linch green and follows the line down, to a picture of a man, also in Lion’s gold and scarlet, with splashes of the same green, and from there, across, to woman, and beneath them, too many others to count until the line fades to nothing. One of the Badgers or Moles would know the answer; Edmund turns away, deciding he doesn’t want to ask the question.

3\. Susan, maybe we can get a dog

Consider this a follow on to [Home Thoughts, From Abroad](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28555290)

Lucy gets him into Susan’s hospital room sooner than the doctors would have otherwise allowed; she’s still in bed, with a concussion and a shaved head thanks to a collision with a Soviet thug and his bullet, and Tebbitt girds himself for an argument about using the Rings to fly her out of here.  
  
But he’s got the Rings and they’ve got a lot of ground to cover that can be done far more easily with him sitting in the chair next to her and in control her exit strategy, with the added advantage that Susan won’t be able to duck and dodge physically and, with a concussion, won't be as sharp as she normally is. It's an unaccustomed advantage and he'll use it if he needs to.  
  
Susan is sitting up in the bed, very pale, she’s as damaged as he’s ever seen her with her head thickly bandaged, and she’s been spending the last 24 hours staring at a wall and rehearsing the “I spent my first childhood and young adulthood as a ruling Queen of a land straight out of myth and I’ve already apologized twice for not mentioning it over the last decade I've known you so don’t expect a third….”  
  
Still, the habit of the Queen Susan of Tashbaan, and Narnia it turns out, to keep her own counsel isn’t one she abandons easily.  
  
He waits to see what she begins with but it's a stammering, “Tebbitt… Reg…, I…”  
  
 _Right then._  
  
“I’ve known for years your birth records were a lie, Mrs. Caspian.” He sits in the hard little chair by her bed. “I just didn’t know how.”  
  
He draws from his pocket the faded wood carving of what he now knows is a Wolf and sets it in her lap. “I made sure I retrieved it from your belongings when you were admitted. His name is Lambert?”  
  
Susan nods. It’s the working surname she took as an operative in France.  
  
She brushes her fingers lovingly over the little carving. “Thank you for keeping him safe.”  
  
“I’ve spoken to him. Lambert. In dreams.” Or something.  
  
She's startled and her pupils are still too widely dilated. "Truly?"  
  
Tebbitt leans over and gently covers her hands. “I know you loved him deeply and that you carry him, and that past, with you, always. It’s part of who you are.”  
  
Susan firmly twines her hands in his, clasping the carving between them and leans down to kiss his wrist. “But my future is here, Reg. With you.”  
  
Maybe they can get an Irish wolfhound puppy.

4\. Peter is a rock in more ways than one

“I’m just a failure, is all,” Peter muttered morosely and with grunting, sweating effort, shoved the next rock into the wall he’d been constructing around the Russell House gardens.  
  
Peter had finally been reconciled to what had been clear to Mary since 1942 – the man was no scholar – but his withdrawal from Oxford had been met with shock, alarm, and consternation from his nearest and dearest as the telegrams and telephone calls flooded in; his brother and sisters were arriving tomorrow presumably to console, persuade, commiserate or possibly just get him really drunk.  
  
“It seems to me,” Mary began, as he set to crack the next rock so it fit it perfectly into the space he’d made for it, “that you need to ask yourself what makes you happy.”  
  
He straightened and wiped the sweat from his eyes. “I liked being King.”  
  
Mary laughed. “Yes, but what _about being_ a King appealed? It surely wasn’t the hacking and slaying – you’ve done that.”  
  
Peter took the ever-present pencil from behind his ear, consulted his little book, and Mary held the other end of his tape measure as he checked the dimensions. The leveler would come out next.  
  
“Caring for my subjects," Peter finally said. “Making sure they were fed, supported and secure, had a place to live. I was happy if they were happy, and safe.”  
  
 _Oh for god’s sake. It was so obvious._  
  
“And, of course, with English cities in ruin, and tens of thousands with no place to live, there’s no need for that skill, is there?”  
  
Peter stared at her, as if it really, had never occurred to him. He was so beautiful. And could be so _thick_.  
  
“Churchill was a member of the bricklayers union, Sir Peter Pevsnee. If it was suitable for him, it’s certainly suitable for you.”


	3. Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For loveandrockmusic, Rthverse, Susan/Tebbitt, _killing time_
> 
> Title is from William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 19

  
More Missing moments from[ Home Thoughts, From Abroad](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28555290)  
  
1.  
It had started with the whispers at dawn of the anonymous woman with the gunshot wound who had appeared, with a rough and bloody man, on the St. Thomas’ Hospital front steps, which had then been followed by the nudging at the edge of her weary mind so that, once she finally felt a puff of Lion’s breath on her cheek, Lucy didn’t even need to see the name entered later on the charts; she straightened her cap, snagged a couple of random files from the nurse’s station, and, wrapping her stethoscope around her neck, she marched right into Susan’s private hospital room, as if she belonged there, which, of course, she did.  
  
With a small groan, Susan turned in her bed and as the good sun slanted through the blinds and warmed the cool green room, Lucy went to her sister’s side, “No need to speak, Tebbitt is fine, you will be fine, I love you.”  
  
Susan smiled and murmured, “Would you?” and of course, Lucy knew what she asked and clasped her sister’s hand in her own, gently kissed her brow, and whispered, “Aslan, first and last, watch over your brave daughter and heal her wounds taken in Your Service, I, Lucy the Valiant Healer ask your blessing and give my thanks.”  
  
2.  
A hand shaking his shoulder started him awake; Tebbitt prised open his gummy eyes and was staring at the Pevensie brothers – Bigger than Hell and Scarier than Hell – and he must be really fagged because when normally presented with these towering visages, he’d start babbling bloody poems about heads on pikes or death in trenches and make for the doors, but Bigger than Hell was blocking his exit.  
  
However, instead of murdering him, Scarier than Hell was handing him a satchel and saying, “Mum made you a sandwich; there’s coffee in the thermos and we brought you a change of clothes – Thank you for bringing Susan home" and Bigger than Hell was patting his arm in a consoling way that could have broken it and bent down to whisper, “We also came in case there was anything to take care of?”  
  
Tebbitt nodded, grateful for their consideration of the mess they’d left in that peaceful Wood; he set the little velvet bag with the Rings in Bigger than Hell’s palm, and said, "There's some blood, bandages, coats, but no bodies" and a moment later they were gone.  
  
3.  
_She owes me_ Tebbitt reminded himself as he sat carefully next to Susan’s bedside, struggling to keep the verse galloping through his mind from spilling out his mouth – _She walks in beauty like the night… steady man -- Byron was not helpful at a time like this._  
  
When it seemed Susan was not going to start -- and he would have been surprised if it were otherwise for the High Priestess always kept her own counsel as Walker-Smythe once told him -- he began, “Lucy has told me the outlines and I talked a little with Edmund” – he was glad he managed to omit _Your brother, the not-tall one, Scarier than Hell_ \-- “And I’ve known for years there was something peculiar afoot.”  
  
He reached into his pocket, drew out the box his mother had tearfully given him the day before, set it in Susan’s hands, and, getting down on his knees at her bedside, declared, “With maybe the last secret gone, and you having given me your Rings, I thought it was finally time to give you mine.”


	4. Not what he wants but what he needs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Francienyc, Peter, _not the woman that he wants but the woman that he needs_  
>  Viaethe, Peter, _I'm put together beautifully/big wet bottle in my fist/big wet rose in my teeth/I'm a perfect piece of ass_

For FrancieNYC, Narnia, Peter, not the woman that he wants but the woman that he needs

Peter’s Not OTP Part 1

  1. Narnia



During the security briefing, Willa the Rat and Harah the Crow told Peter and the rest of their council about what Lady Carra of Archenland had said about the High King and Narnia when she walked with her brother on the eastern balcony; though duplicitous and stupid guests (and Dalia knew Carra was both the moment she got a whiff of the woman) would assume that no one could overhear their cruel and snide remarks, the Mischief and the Murder took surveillance of Cair Paravel guests very seriously and if something substantive was said, and anything someone coming courting said _always_ was substantive, it was duly reported.   
  
“Thank you Harah and Willa – it is very good thing that Lady Carra and Lord Car leave tomorrow and we shall certainly decline their request to stay another ten-day,” Peter concluded with a wave that to everyone with a nose knew was costing him dearly and, standing abruptly, walked out of the Council Room; Dalia trotted after him, keeping her fur from rising and her tail from lashing, though she could hear the murmurs of dark anger from the others who had heard the intelligence -- the Archenlanders last night at Cair Paravel would surely be eventful and very unpleasant and it was best if she knew nothing about it.   
  
By the time she made it to Peter’s uncomfortable little office (of course, his office, that was where he always escaped to), he had thrown himself on his couch and was downing a skin of lightning; Dalia shut the door with her tail and shoved her head under his dangling hand and purring, tried, as she had so many times before, to push away his darkest and ever-present fears, “You are a great King and a good man, Peter, I love you, you are loved by your family and your subjects and you always put your duty to Narnia first -- do not doubt ever doubt that or yourself,” but Peter just shook his head and drank more deeply of the liquor.

  1. The War



“No girls, but at least you remembered the beer,” Peter said and kicked a stool out as Gardner and Gray came back with the pints; once the Americans moved into the base adjoining the 6th Airborne Glider Corp in Tidworth, the birds all flew off for the Yanks, and the chocolate, stockings, and higher pay they kept in their snappy uniforms and kits.  
  
“It’s damned unpatriotic is what it is,” Gray said mournfully and Gardner nodded.   
  
Not having expected any different result, Peter took a pull on his beer, and clapping Gray on the shoulder, promised, “Buy me another two pints, and by night's end, I’ll toss a few of those American fliers for distance into the pond.”

  1. Post-War



Peter’s Not OTP Part 3  
 _I’d posted a version of this before in comments; below is in two parts, a fill for Vialethe and then continuing with a fill for Francienyc  
_ For Vialethe, Narnia, Peter, _I'm put together beautifully/big wet bottle in my fist/big wet rose in my teeth/I'm a perfect piece of ass_

3a.

Mary collected her own drink and took a step back as Peter raised his celebratory glass. And suddenly…  
  
She was so startled she almost spilled her merely adequate whiskey. “Goodness! Peter! I never noticed before!”  
  
She took another step back, set her drink down and put her hands out, shaping them into a rectangle, and tried to block out and estimate dimensions and their relativity. “Really, Peter, do you ever tuck your shirt in? Stop leaning against the drinks cabinet, would you?”  
  
This was fascinating. Beyond fascinating. This was bordering upon that M word he didn't like.   
  
“Mary?”  
  
She patted down her lab coat, searching. Damn. Had she left it in the ballroom while measuring the sacrum?  
  
“Mary?  
  
Shoving her hands into her pockets, she found the elusive tape measure and drew it out, threading it between her fingers. “What’s wrong? You’re looking very alarmed.” Peter didn’t alarm easily, either. The man had pranged into a Normandy bridge in a glider on D-Day.  
  
“Alarm is completely justified when are you stalking me with a measuring cord.”  
  
“Oh, hmm, yes, sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. With my tape measure.” She snapped it between her hands and got a sarcastic eyebrow raise. He didn’t do it very well, though. His brother and sister communicated layers of nuanced conversation in a single quirk of the brow.  
  
“It is not the tape measure, Mary. It is you, advancing upon me with a tape measure, at full speed and a maniacal gleam, that I know, after all these years, to heed and wisely yield to else you mow me down.”   
  
"Please no yielding! Humour, me, Peter, if you will. It’s your hips, obscured though they are by those ridiculous shirttails.”   
  
“Hips?”   
  
“Yes! Well, more precisely, your shoulder to hip ratio. I just noticed it when I handed you the drink. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.”  
  
Why was he suddenly looking at her so oddly?  
  
“And the tape measure is because you wish to calculate my…”  
  
“Hips and shoulders measurement and their ratio, yes.”

  
_3b. Continued in FrancieNYC fill_ , _not the woman that he wants but the woman that he needs_

“Mary, are you flirting with me?”  
  
The comment brought her up short. “What? Flirt? With _you?_ ”   
  
His eyebrow rose even higher.   
  
“I’m sorry, Peter, no, I didn’t mean it to sound like that.” She could feel her colour rise. “I just… I didn’t mean to…”  
  
“Insult me? Flirt with me? Or insult me when you meant to be flirting with me?”  
  
“I did not mean to insult you,” she finally managed to get out firmly. “You’re, well, I wanted to get your ratio because I wanted to document something that appeared impressive to me even under those untidy shirttails.” Hoping to get back something more like equilibrium and the easy camaraderie they usually shared, Mary added, “I’d say you appear to represent a magnificent shoulder to hip ratio, rather than impressive, but I know you don’t like that word.”


	5. like foals unsteady on their feet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vialethe, Narnia, Pevensies, _young and drunk and stumbling in the street outside the Joiner's Arms/like foals unsteady on their feet_

I was thinking about [this](https://archiveofourown.org/comments/27974353) posted in full [here](https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/124755.html)

* * *

It’s girl – or well, woman trouble, for both of them – Miriam’s slammed the door on Edmund (again) and Mary has sailed off to America and Peter is still grieving. So John takes his boys to their corner pub; Edmund can’t keep up with Peter, no one can, but they’re both seriously pissed, leaning on one another, using that “brother and King” language again, and Peter is refusing to sing that reprehensible song about moose. 

Nursing his single ale, John notices that cat loitering on the street outside and feels the anger boil up anew – he went to war to save his family, only for his children to be pulled into that cat’s own bloody fights and then it dragged them back here, forcing them to leave behind their spouses – and John’s own grandson, dead a thousand years. That cat can just go to hell, and he’ll watch over his boys instead.


	6. Valentine's Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Galadryels, Narnia, Lucy, Live hard/ Die Young/ Bad girls do it well  
> Sidhehound, any, any, instead of flowers or chocolates, character gives/receives very ornate knife as a valentine's gift.

Galadryels, Narnia, Lucy, _Live hard/ Die Young/ Bad girls do it well_

So much time around Lucy has obviously rubbed off on him because Jack is feeling the uncomfortable hypocrisy that looking at the classical paintings of a _Bacchanal_ hanging on the walls of the Harvard and Boston museums is just fine – everyone assumes he’s intently studying them for an art history class – but the gentleman’s magazines he knows his dad hides from him and Ruby somehow aren’t.  
  
And Lucy tells him these lush paintings don’t begin to describe the glory of the real thing – and no, she didn’t “lose” anything, she gained something and he will too, eventually, when she thinks he’s ready.   
  
He appreciates her tutelage but it is uncomfortable because he really doesn’t think he’s going to be able to measure up to foreplay with a troop of Maenads and sex with a god; disappointing Lucy is unthinkable (also dangerous) so he's just going to have to keep studying.

* * *

Sidhehound, any, any, _instead of flowers or chocolates, character gives/receives very ornate knife as a valentine's gift._

It was their first Valentine’s Day as a couple after, well, _everything_ and Lucy had no idea what to get Jack; after querying everyone, she settled for a box of condoms they could enjoy together and a handmade card where she misspelled Happy and Valentine (but spelled Love right) and thanked him for being patient.

As they shared lobster rolls at Boston Harbour, Jack handed her a smallish, sturdy box, narrow, and disproportionately heavy for its size, so at least it wasn’t an engagement ring.

Lucy lifted the lid and almost dropped the box, and the ornate oh-so-familiar dagger within it, into the Harbour. 

“I found a bladesmith, here in Boston,” Jack said, his anxious words all came out in a jumble, “I had him use antler instead of ivory for the handle, and of course red glass instead of rubies – Susan and Edmund helped me with the design – and Aslan’s stamped on it, of course, the bladesmith thought I was mad insisting on a lion, and it’s small enough you can carry it in the leather sheath he made on you or even a handbag, if you ever use one, so you can have a little of Narnia with you that’s also…”

“That’s also a little of you, too,” and Lucy kissed him so hard the lobster rolls rolled into the Harbour; they had to scramble, but did manage to save the dagger and the condoms.


	7. Slow Train

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Vialethe, Narnia, Susan, _she had a marvelous time ruining everything_

Even once the train left East Germany and they were again, safely in the West, Tebbitt didn’t ask Mrs. C about whether Operation Gold had gone live. 

But he could tell from her ease and the way she exuded satisfaction that her electronics work on the install had been successful.

With the CIA, they’d dug a 450-metre tunnel from West Berlin to East and had successfully tapped into the Soviet’s telephone cables that ran under the city; if there were any communications about the Kremlin’s atomic bomb project, he, Susan Caspian, and the team from the CIA and MI6 would know about it.


	8. When the bough breaks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WingedFlight, Narnia, Eustace/Jill + 1, parenthood

Jill hears Scrubb singing _Rock a bye baby_ to Riley and she’s still laughing and crying when their son is asleep and he joins her in the bedroom.  
  
“I know,” Scrubb says, sniffing a little, “that’s why I picked it.”  
  
She wipes away the tears of joy and grief that are always shed when they think of Narnia-that-was, and tells her him, “Puddleglum would have _loved_ a grim lullaby about babies and their cradles falling out of trees.”


	9. Winning His Spurs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Vialethe, Narnia, Peter, _I'm a festival, I'm a parade/and all the wine is all for me_

“And so, Sir Peter, which was better?” his wife of forty-two years asks after the investiture and his knighting as the last guest had finally left the celebratory party for 200 at their home.  
  
He straightens the cardi on her shoulder, sips his scotch and, having mulled it most of the day, knows his answer, “Well, for the first one, all I did was kill a wolf; this time, I’ve provided decades of constituent service _and_ battled Maggie Thatcher for _fifteen years_ , so I do feel I've _really_ earned it this time ‘round.”   
  
Mary nods and returns to one of her favorite topics, “This one was surely safer as well – I know I’d feel more comfortable with Queen Elizabeth striking me across the shoulders than a Lion somehow holding a sword at my neck.”


	10. Wings In The Rock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Athoughtfox, Narnia, Eustace Scrubb, _'nothing has really happened until it has been described'_

“Doctor Scrubb, you think this might finally be it?” one of his impossibly young doctoral students asks as she gently scrubs with a toothbrush to separate the bone turned to rock from the regular rock of the South Dakota badlands.

Scrubb sits back on his heels, wipes the sweat from his eyes with his sopping bandanna, stares at the bone bed and takes a measure of what looks to be the radius and metacarpals and a wingspan of over 13 meters – a small aeorplane.

But it’s not just the length and breadth of the wing but whether it could have supported bulk and so far, after 30 years of digging in the richest Late Cretaceous sites all over the world, they’ve found and added enormously to their understanding of Order _Pterosauria_ , but he’s not yet found a paleontological reference for the most common beast in folklore worldwide; there were fossils people thought were Cyclops and gryphons, there’s got to be one for dragons, too, he just needs to keep looking.


End file.
